BOSTON — Mean Creek took the top prize for album of the year, Dropkick Murphys were the punk artist of the year, Passion Pit copped the "Best Boston Act Who Doesn't Live in Boston Award," and pop duo Rolling Stone cover band Karmin took the nod as artist of the year.

All well and good, and, of course, it's nice to win. And on a somewhat silly prerecorded video, Karmin singer Amy Heiderman chirped, "We're really sad we can't be there tonight, but we're really glad to win artist of the year."

But, really, the 25th Boston Music Awards, held Sunday night for a crowd of 1,300-plus at Boston's Liberty Hotel, wasn't about winners and losers. In fact, the half-hour awards ceremony that bisected the five-hour fete almost felt like an interruption of the party. Very few winners got mic time or screen time to thank anyone, and that was a smart choice.

When Boston-raised, but now Las Vegas-based Grammy-nominated producer Clinton Sparks (Lady Gaga, Akon, Pitbull, Rick Ross. etc.) was given his special achievement award he was effusive in praising his hometown. But in a TMI moment, he burbled, "I am super-nervous and I get gassy when I'm nervous. Thank God there's no one behind me."

Acceptance speeches have dragged down past shows.

"The Boston Music Awards have evolved over the years," said veteran record producer Rick Harte, Ace of Hearts studio owner who is best-known for producing BMA best album nominees Mission of Burma and is working on a new Real Kids album. "The people in the music community can converge at this event, and it's a way to say: 'We're part of Boston, here we are.' It's good for a lot of us behind the scenes."

It was also good for raising funds. Sunday's BMAs brought in its most-ever, $60,000, for Music Drives Us, the musician-oriented charity helmed by car czar Ernie Boch Jr. Boch recalled the specious early days of the awards, when it was a for-profit entity featuring New Kids on the Block mini-concerts and attracting scads of teenyboppers.

"Local musicians didn't take it seriously, give it respect," Boch said, noting the turnaround when BMAs were taken over six years ago by executive director Chip Rives. "Chip came to me (four years ago) and said, 'You gotta help me out or it's gonna die.' So I stepped in to get it financially secure." The BMAs, he added, have become the longest-running local music awards show in the country.

Twenty bands played half-hour sets, staggered throughout the night and spread over four floors. Younger artists were certainly the main focus. Early in the night, the sextet called Dwight and Nicole scored with a screaming hard rock/soul song, boasting the line "I wanna be on top of the world!" (Nicole Nelson recently appeared on "The Voice.") The band Evolfo Doofeht, which won the international artist of the year award, played a hot funk-rock set on a stage so packed that the horn section had to stand at the side in the jammed together audience. The folk-indie rock band Air Traffic Controller played a terrific set, climaxing with "Bad Axe, MI" and its rousing "One more song!" refrain.

What you especially love are scenes like this: Al Polk, lead singer for Streight Angular, left the stage during their band's set, crawled up a spiral staircase, screamed "I'm gonna jump!" and then dropped 10 feet into the audience, whereupon he crowd-surfed. "I've never even been that close to a spiral staircase!" he marveled later of his impromptu decision. His garage-punk band, a trio, was nominated for best video for "Everyone Is Syncopated." They didn't win, but Polk said, "The awards nomination is like saying, 'Good job this year, we heard your song.'"

Added bassist Andrew Mello: "We play for human beings. We play from the heart. We grew up seeing bands like Nirvana and Weezer, and we're just trying to get people to feel something in a sea of people just standing around looking at their cell phones."

Two of the best live gigs were by vets, on again-off again bands the Real Kids and O Positive. Dave Herlihy, O Positive's lead singer, recalled winning best male vocalist the first year, saying it served as a key part in the band's growth from the local to the national level. "It was a big deal to us," said Herlihy, now a lawyer and Northeastern professor. "In those days, it mattered. We had all these interdependencies — winning could help you get a booking agent or a record deal. It was a shared music industry. Now, no one gives a damn. Everybody has their own private music industry. You've got to find your fans, and they don't care about awards. You've still got to be good — that's an essential component. There's so much competition for your attention span."

John Felice, the Real Kids singer-guitarist, was less sanguine, and, in fact, angry about the posh nature of the affair. "They don't know anything about rock 'n' roll," he steamed before his band's set. "It's a bunch of hangers-on and losers who think this is good and it sucks. This was a rock 'n' roll town and it obviously isn't any more. This is my town and I can't believe what's become of it."

During their set, Felice tried to reclaim what he could as the band tore through their hit "All Kindsa Girls," exclaiming "Baby, I'm happy just to be alive!"

"I'm not really sure what the focus is," said Cars keyboardist and solo ukulele player Greg Hawkes, who was there at the behest of former Extreme drummer/Godsmack manager Paul Geary. The Cars' heyday was before the awards existed, and this was Hawkes' first time attending. What did the awards mean?

"The older I get the more I think 'What's anything mean anymore?,'" he said. "It's the state of my existential anxiety. I'm a tourist. I'm just passing through. But it's a swank soirée."

"It's a classy celebration of what we do," Rives said, asked about the upscale nature of the event, so different from a rock club setting. "We worked hard to make sure we engaged all aspects of the music community. You'll hear things here from every genre. Our focus is about finding the next big acts. And it's the only time of the year the Boston music industry gets together. It's about the music and the connections. It's not really about the awards."

Out in the crowd, Shea Rose, the sassy singer who won best pop/R&B award, praised the competition, and said the victory was "a jewel, another honor from Boston." She hoped it would serve as a "catalyst" when her new album, "Dance This Mess Around," drops in April. But Rose wasn't basking in glory. She was out in the crowd, mixing and mingling with the music industry masses.